Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News Work continues on the next phase of the Savannah Gardens Apartments on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Courtesy of Alan S. Low & Associates This is the interior wall of the bedroom of apartment 611, where sheetrock and carpet have been removed to show damage from water intrusion.

Courtesy of Alan S. Low & Associates Carpet pulled back from the corner of Asia Jones' son's bedroom shows water and mold damage from water intrusion.

Courtesy of Alan S. Low & Associates The interior of Savannah Gardens' apartment 611 where water damage in the walls and floor were found in August.

Asia Jones moved with her four children into her new Savannah Gardens apartment in March, excited with her new address and the potential future it held for her family.

“I just liked the fact they were new,” Jones, a 26-year-old single mother said Thursday. “It was way better than what I had before, way better.”

By Sept. 4, barely six months later, she and her family were gone from apartment number 611. They fled the three-bedroom unit to escape standing water in her son’s bedroom and rampant mold growth that sent all five family members to the emergency room at Memorial University Medical Center.

Jones’ apartment was one of 115 units in Phase I of the planned development, including 310 affordable housing apartments and up to 120 single-family homes on the 44-acre site.

Charice Heywood, president of Atlanta-based Mercy Housing Southeast which developed Savannah Gardens, said Friday problems have occurred in six or seven of the Savannah Gardens units and are being addressed.

City planners have called the project an effort to undo blight and provide affordable housing for residents. When fully built out in 2014 Savannah Gardens will have 550 units, including 120 single-family homes, 60 senior apartments and more than 330 apartments.

The planned mix of rent-subsidized housing and market-rate, affordable housing, has been touted as a potential contributor to a major revitalization of the Pennsylvania Avenue corridor.

Affordable housing

Mercy Housing Southeast, the city of Savannah and Community Housing Services Agency dedicated the first phase of the four-stage development in November after almost five years of work to acquire, demolish and revitalize the former Strathmore Estates, a collapsing, crime-ridden World War II-era privately-owned, low-income housing complex on Pennsylvania Avenue.

NorSouth Construction Company of Georgia, Inc., was the general contractor for Mercy Housing Southeast on the multi-family apartments at Savannah Gardens.

The project was described as a $100 million public/private development that would reach beyond public housing residents.

The city of Savannah invested $13 million, of which nearly $11 million came from Phase 5 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax funds. The city initially had designated $6 million in SPLOST 5 money, but in 2010, during a realignment of projects, added almost $5 million more.

Mercy Southeast and Mercy Housing Management Group are two separate nonprofits and are part of Denver-based Mercy Housing Inc.

Tony Roundtree worked as maintenance supervisor at Savannah Gardens from day one for two years and at Strathmore Estates for a year before that.

He called Savannah Gardens “a black hole.”

“The place is just literally falling apart,” he said Thursday. “They have major, major problems out there.”

“ I mean everything is leaking out there,” he said, listing leaking water lines, roofs, air conditioners and water heaters, toilets and tubs.

“It’s a nightmare,” he said.

Roundtree said he became frustrated with management problems at Savannah Gardens and tried to go directly to corporate officials.

As a result, he said, he was fired on Aug. 22, despite a recent excellent annual review and a number of commendations. He has left Savannah and is working as a maintenance supervisor in Atlanta.

Local Mercy officials attributed his dismissal to “continual rude and disrespectful behavior.”

But, Roundtree said, officials who ignored his warnings earlier were trying to contact him before he left.

‘Constructive eviction’

Lowe and associate attorney Ellen Schoolar sent a letter Sept. 4 informing Mercy Housing Management Group their failure to act had resulted in a “constructive eviction” of their client.

“The severity of the mold problem in Ms. Jones’ unit has made it uninhabitable,” the attorneys wrote in their letter to Cheryll O’Bryan, president of Mercy Housing Management Group.

“Obviously, Ms. Jones and her children cannot reside in an apartment inundated with dirty water and toxic mold, and Ms. Jones’ repeated pleas to Mercy Housing management have been all but ignored.”

Lowe described the conditions in Jones’ apartment as being “squalid,” including mold exposure that caused Jones and her four children to become “severely ill with violent coughing, runny noses, runny eyes, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain.”

The letter said Mercy Housing management’s “actions (or inaction) display such a total lack of care as would give rise to the presumption that Mercy Housing had a conscious indifference to the consequences of its failure to repair the water intrusion and mold problem in Ms. Jones’s apartment.”

Mercy Housing is liable for damages incurred by Jones and her children, the letter added, and demanded the return of Jones’ $500 security deposit and reimbursement of $875 for a mold report and structural report, all by Sept. 11.

Heywood said corporate attorneys are investigating the matter to “determine how this actually played out.”

“We have had a myriad of options for residents, (but) we were not able to provide an option that this particular resident agreed to.”

City officials take notice

Alderman John Hall, whose district includes Savannah Gardens, said he expects a more thorough environmental inspection to find more units with mold problems.

“For the children and the people in those units, it’s going to be a very, very bad health issue,” he said. “They’re having breathing problems.”

Hall said his primary concern is getting mold remediation done and finding temporary housing for residents in the affected units. He said he and city officials will continue to stay involved and ask questions, including whether the quality of workmanship is an issue.

“If you saw it (the mold) the way I saw it and the way Alderman (Estella) Shabazz saw it, this is serious. This is real trouble,” Hall said. “We’re not going to let this drop, me and my colleagues. For the most part these people have nowhere else to go.”

Small-Toney told council members Thursday that one of the issues is that the new units were built to energy-efficient guidelines. The advantage is the units allow little airflow, which means that heated or cooled interior air doesn’t seep outdoors.

While it saves money on air conditioning, residents will have to understand that it also requires that air conditioners must be run during hot, humid months to avoid mold growth, she said.

Back home

Jones and her children, for their part, are back in her parents’ home on East 37th Street and aren’t sure where to turn next.

“I will have to find a place,” she said.

Jones works as an assistant server with The Lady & Sons Restaurant for $8 an hour, 30-35-hours a week.

She said she paid her $627-a-month rent on time. At Savannah Gardens, Jones qualified for rent adjustments based on her earnings because of tax credits used in construction.

She said the Savannah Gardens unit was clean and decent from the outside when she moved in on March 1 and offered a “stable condition for me and my kids” ages 8 months to 9 years.

Things went well until her 6-year-old son reported on Aug. 13 that the carpet in his room was wet during a period of constant rain. When she pulled the carpet away from the wall, she found water.

“It was raining that day,” she said. “It never stopped. It was like a lake.”

She said she told a woman in the apartments’ management office about the problems but got no response until two days later,

Her son’s room abutted the breezeway between the new units and, when the exterior baseboard was removed, showed water damage.

A report by Hoffman Engineering Group later found the breezeway was allowing water to collect along the exterior wall and seep into the bedroom.

ServPro of Savannah was sent to her apartment twice and a dehumidifier was provided. Sheetrock was removed after the mold problem surfaced.

By Aug. 19, all of her family was showing symptoms of asthma, which required a trip to Memorial’s emergency department and some $1,500 in medical expenses, she said.

The children will need follow up care at the Children’s Hospital at Memorial, Jones said, and she will need follow up with a Memorial physician.

New digs?

Jones conceded she was offered a move to another apartment, number 113, but she declined because the former resident had to move out because of three problems that made the unit uninhabitable.

Jones disputed assertions in a memo last week from Small-Toney to city officials that, based on Mercy reports, management at the apartments offered to relocate her to an apartment in Cuyler-Brownville and offered her a hotel room.

She said she “never heard of Cuyler–Brownville” nor knew where it was, and said she was never offered a hotel.

“Our stories differ,” Heywood with Mercy Southeast said.

Heywood said Jones asked to be relocated to the Senior Units in Phase II or into Phase III, which is under construction, but neither was possible.

The management company also offered an apartment in Heritage Place, which is in Cuyler-Brownville, and a hotel, both of which Jones declined, Heywood said.